Lean management’s core objective is to “create value without waste” by optimizing and coordinating activities that add value to customers while eliminating non-value-adding or redundant tasks. This customer-centric approach leads to efficient and effective processes. In healthcare settings like hospitals or clinics, these principles can be adapted to cater to patients’ specific needs.
Five foundational Lean principles for lean healthcare are: (1) identify customers and define value, (2) map value streams, (3) achieve flow by eliminating waste, (4) organize based on customer demand, and (5) pursue continuous improvement.
Identify Customers and Define Value
Identifying and addressing customer needs is vital for organizations. In a hospital, patients, relatives, health insurance companies, and governments are the external customers. Additionally, internal customers like medical disciplines and the emergency unit should not be overlooked.
Ensuring effective coordination with internal customer groups is essential to maintain a functional hospital. Each customer group views value-added activities differently. For patients, true value added is achieved by healing or improving health during their hospital stay.
Map Value Streams
Admission to and release from a hospital are commonly cited as value streams that often involve unnecessary activities and inefficiencies. These can include administrative hurdles, communication problems between medical departments, and, from the patient’s viewpoint, excessive waiting times.
To enhance comprehension of these value streams, it is advisable to create visual representations of these processes. By breaking down the value stream into individual process steps, we can identify problematic issues and wasteful practices, which in turn uncover opportunities for improvement.
Achieve Flow by Eliminating Waste
The waste-free state is achieved by applying Lean Management concepts like flow and takt. In healthcare, interdisciplinary thinking is vital to avoid negatively affecting other processes. Solely optimizing one area, such as radiology for outpatients, while neglecting emergency units or inpatient care is unacceptable and unsustainable for the entire hospital.
Organize Based on Customer Demand
The fourth Lean principle emphasizes delivering services according to demand. Properly assigning tasks and responsibilities is crucial, supported by measures like service level agreements to manage interactions between hospital functions (e.g., radiology and surgery). This fosters reliable service delivery, enhances collaboration, reduces redundant tasks due to unclear roles, and ultimately shortens patient stay.
Pursue Continuous Improvement
The fifth principle in achieving a Lean hospital revolves around the concept of sustainable and ongoing improvement. This entails striving for “perfection” in hospital operations on a daily basis.
To facilitate this process, two effective tools come into play: Kaizen boards and Kaizen meetings. These instruments enable teams to regularly focus on small, achievable improvements that can be implemented in the short term. For instance, a nursing department can harness the ideas and expertise of its nurses to not only enhance daily work practices but also make valuable contributions to the overall continuous improvement of the entire hospital.
Lean healthcare is being increasingly utilized to enhance productivity, reduce lead time, and improve customer and employee satisfaction.
